Happy Spring everyone! Sorry for the delay in getting the NEW painting up today. I finally got to see the proof copy last night, and noticed a couple of things in it, that I hadn't noticed in the painting before, and stayed up all night doing touch ups. Then I had to get new digital files put together for the printer. They did a rush job and had some ready for me early this morning. It was a long night, but the painting looks MUCH better now.
There's been too much going on lately, so I'm a bit behind on many things it seems.
If you followed the link from Facebook, you know that the new theme for the next several paintings is "Day of the Dead Fairies". I've finished 6 paintings so far in this series, and have 4 more started (and have several more sketched as well, but it's undecided how many I'll paint of those).
Many years ago, while talking to the owner at Sedona Green, he mentioned that he received several requests each month for paintings of Fairies, and he asked if I could do some, preferably with Sedona backgrounds. I tried my hand at painting a couple, but while I could paint a fairly decent skeleton, at the time I really couldn't paint a person's face, nor a fairy's.
I dont usually give up on projects that I set out to do, but I just couldn't get into the theme, and I let Mike know that I wasn't going to paint them. He ended up painting some himself. Which while were very impressionistic, sold quick.
I've worked on learning how to paint faces since that time, and have done a couple of portraits, but I still couldn't seem to get inspired enough to try the Fairy paintings. That is at least until I was in a little junk store in San Diego back in 2011, and saw a little wall hanging plaque, of a skeleton Fairy with butterfly wings. I bought it so I wouldn't forget the idea, which I'm prone to do. Just too many things to make and do, to remember everything. I find myself making lots of notes, sketches, or buying little items that sparked an idea.
The little junk store packed up the little skeleton Fairy really nice in a little box, and when I got back to my studio, I had a huge order to work on, so I put the little package on a shelf to hang later. My studio is always in some sort of chaos, and the package got a little buried, and I didn't see it again until 2013 when I was organizing the studio. And of course, I had forgotten about the Day of the Dead Fairy idea all that time, and went on to paint the 16 paintings I did in 2012 instead.
When I found the little package, I hung the skeleton Fairy, started getting lots of ideas for paintings, but didn't have any time to paint. Most of my living is made making jewelry, windchimes, sun catchers, and such, so that always comes first. For a year I worked extra long days so I could get ahead of orders, to have some time to paint. I combined the freed up painting time, with a trip to Montreal to be with Michel, and painted while he was at work.
In the first Day of the Dead Fairy painting, it was originally planned to be set in a Disney-esque forest, with a castle seen through the trees, the sparkling lights of a city in the distance.... It was all too cute though. Way too cute, and saccharin.
It took a couple of very frustrating weeks of sketching, brain storming, tearing up and crumpling sketches, and when I was about to give up, I went for a walk around the city. In a yard I walked by all the time, to admire the flower beds, I happened to notice a little garden gnome mixed in with the flowers that I hadn't seen before. I went back home and started sketching.
It turned out to be really challenging at first. I'm 6'4, so I'm really used to having a vantage point
where I look down on things, to some degree or other. Which is the vantage point, from which all my previous paintings have for the most part been painted. I did several sketches where I was looking down on the flowers and the skeleton fairy, like I would in real life, but they just didn't work.
I decided to paint it straight on, but from down low. Not really knowing what flowers look like from that low, I started going around with a camera and photographing plants and flowers from down on the ground to have reference photos. Things definitely look different from down low.
After several different sketches of flowers, I decided to go with Hollyhocks, mostly because it's one of my favorites to grow here in Arizona. A nice hardy plant, that doesn't need as much water as most other flowering plants, and self propagating.
I did a little reading last night about the Hollyhock plant, while waiting for the digital files to upload for the printer. I had no idea that in Fairy folklore, the Hollyhock plant is a "favorite home for Fairies", and you're supposed to plant them in your yard to attract Fairies and good luck.
Until I read that, I was going to just call this painting "Hollyhock Fairy". You've probably noticed I dont spend a lot of time thinking about the titles, hehe. But after the reading last night, I decided to change it to
"Thrice Lucky" this morning, due to the four leaf clover, the ladybug, and now the third lucky item, the Hollyhocks.
I'd like to say I planned it out this way, but honestly she was going to be holding a dandelion flower originally, the color of which clashed horribly with the dress. The ladybug was going to be an ant, as whenever I have the hollyhock plants growing in my yard, the ants really like to climb them. I painted the ant many times, but it kept looking menacing. As with most of my paintings, the paintings keep changing, right up until the end.
A little odd, and "lucky" thing happened this morning, that I'll forever attribute to this painting. I stayed up all night doing the touch ups on this painting, and getting all the digital pieces ready for facebook, the webstore, and such. Life has been pretty hectic of late, but for one night I was so focused on finishing this, that I was actually pretty happy. At the center of everything going on of late has been immigration issues in getting Michel into the US, and we were sent an email 2.5 weeks ago saying our packet had been denied, and we were going to have to resubmit. This time including "more official" papers, than the ones we included in the first packet. Rather expensive papers to get mind you, and require quite a bit of time to obtain. I had begun collecting some, grumbling the entire time at the expense and how much work it was all going to be, when the packet we prepared was perfectly fine, based on the instructions that came with all the immigration forms.
Within a minute of changing the name of this painting to "Thrice Lucky", another email arrived from the immigration department. They rereviewed our packet, and deemed it satisfactory to proceed. While I'm a little angry at the money I've spent in beginning to prepare a new packet, I'm happy that our case is proceeding, and wont take even longer due to having to resubmit. Just in case this was a mistake, I called the immigration department, which is usually a practice in futility. They seem to have only a handful of phone lines, and once those are full, everyone else just gets a message that instructs you to try calling back later, with no option to be put on hold. Usually I'll call constantly, for weeks on end before getting through. Today, the first time I tried, I got through. And then to make it more miraculous, once you manage to get one of the available phone lines, you can be on hold forever, just waiting. Today, less than 20 minutes, and when I talked to one of the representatives, it turns out that the good news email was correct. So several good luck things, all in a row, right after changing the painting's name. I'm going to see if it's still working and go buy a lottery ticket this evening. ;-)
As you saw in the facebook cover photo, there's a way to get a FREE copy of this print. Now through March 27th, all orders of $35.00 or more at the Dizzybear Creations webstore, will get a
hand signed print of "Thrice Lucky", matted to fit a 5 x 7 frame included FREE with their order. A $9.99 value
I'll have a couple of other ways to get a FREE print, without purchase, coming up soon (including the trivia contest), so keep watching Facebook for news on that!
Click here to be taken to the Dizzybear Creations webstore.
It is INCREDIBLY helpful in getting my artwork out in the world, and is greatly appreciated.
If you have any questions you'd like to ask that I can answer in a future blog, you can either post them in the comment section below, or send them to my email dizzybear73@gmail.com
*** Update *** I'm usually really good with details, and if you read the blog about "Sunset Glow", you saw that I made a mistake on the story card that went out on the very first batch of prints. I've been kind of chuckling about that, because I really am good with details, nearly all the time. I was restocking a store today, April 11, 2015, and I noticed that the very first batch of "Thrice Lucky" ALSO had a mistake on the story card. Guess I'm trying to do too much these days. It states that "Thrice Lucky" was released on April 20th, 2015, when in reality, it was released on March 20th, 2015. If you have one of the mistaken story cards on your print, you have one of the very first prints to leave my studio. :-)
Now through April 6th, you can click on the following link and type the word "Jerome" as a comment to be entered into a drawing. https://www.facebook.com/dizzybearcreations/photos/a.199369476769839.45006.146857072021080/943097849063661/?type=1&theater
